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“How do I know...?”
“Call one of them. We just came from the meeting at Poggers and we’re worried. You know about Loren and Brianna...”
“Oh, my God...” The woman’s voice was a wail, and the inner door buzzed. They climbed the interior stairs to the second floor and stepped into a hallway, where a woman stood by an open apartment door looking down at them. Letty recognized her from the photo in Delph’s apartment.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Bellado said when they were inside her apartment. She was a tall woman, blond and solid, peaches-and-cream complexion, wearing a tee-shirt and blue shorts. Anexpensive street bike and two pairs of Rollerblades were stacked against one wall.
Letty told her about the meeting at Poggers, and that people said Delph had been gone for a week.
“Daniel did work with Loren and Craig Sovern on the Russian train hack. He was proud of it, but then Loren called and said there were rumors that Russians were looking for them. Some Russian guys were going around asking questions. He was worried but... he wouldn’t hide. He said, ‘Fuck ’em,’ they deserved what they got.”
“Which would sorta not be the point when you’re dealing with Russian gangsters,” Baxter said to her, a less-than-diplomatic comment that made Letty wince.
Bellado didn’t seem to notice. “I know, I know. When he disappeared—he hasn’t been gone a week, he’s been gone five days, but he wasn’t talking to anyone but me, so maybe they thought he’d been gone longer. Anyway, he’d started doing some research and a couple of days before... he got lost... he emailed me pictures of cars, but I didn’t know what to do with them.”
“Could we see them?” Letty asked.
“Who are you guys?” she asked.
Letty nodded at Baxter and said, “He’s a hacker. I’m his bodyguard.”
“I don’t...”
“That’s the truth,” Baxter interrupted. “If you push her, she’ll show you her gun. Anyway, we need to see those photos. We’ve got a guy who can get into LAPD files...”
“William?”
“Yeah, William,” Letty said. “We need to see the photos, so we can figure out what Daniel was looking at.”
“Well...”
She showed them the photos, taken with a decent camera, sent in emails to her desktop Dell. Three of the photos showed the blue SUV identical to the one the killers had driven to Loren Barron’s house. Three more showed a black Mercedes G-Class SUV, and a dozen more images showed a miscellany of other cars.
Letty tapped the blue SUV and said, “We know these guys. They’re Russians.”
Baxter asked, “Mind if we copy the pictures?” He took the truck keys from his pocket. The ring included a rubbery pink plastic human thumb as a key fob, which Letty had thought was odd, but then, Baxter was Baxter. He pulled the thumb apart, revealing a USB plug. He said, “Thumb drive.”
Letty rolled her eyes and said to Bellado, “Nerd.”
“Go ahead and copy them,” Bellado said. “If you think it’ll do any good.”
“He thought he was being followed, so maybe we can find out who those people were,” Baxter said, as he sat in front of the computer, plugged in the thumb, and began dragging one photo after the other to the flash drive.
Letty, looking over his shoulder, said, “Look at the backgrounds. He got shots of the SUV and the G-Wagen in different places. Maybe hewasfollowed.”
“But he was taking pictures of the cars, not their license plates,” Baxter said.
“You think the Russians got him?” Bellado asked, fear in her voice.
Letty thought she knew the answer, but said, “We don’t know that yet.”
Fourteen
Baxter sent the photos of the blue SUV and the G-Wagen to Nowak. They said good-bye to Bellado, told her that they’d call when they found Daniel Delph. Back in the truck, Letty called Nowak and asked what the FBI was doing.
“They’re putting pressure on the man they’ve got, but he’s not giving up anything—not yet, anyway,” Nowak said. “Might be too scared to talk. There are worse places than American prisons.”
“So they’re not focused on a person or location?” Baxter asked.
